The Validation of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Predicting Naval Academy Disenrollment and Military Aptitude.

摘要

Despite rigorous selection procedures, approximately one-third of the officer candidates admitted to the Naval Academy disenroll before being commissioned. The present research sought to examine the usefulness of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) for improving the selection of Naval Academy midshipmen. SVIBs have been administered since 1967 to applicants and/or entering Naval Academy midshipmen and analyzed to determine their value in predicting disenrollment and military aptitude. Three separate interest scales were empirically developed to predict motivational disenrollment, academic disenrollment, and military aptitude. The scales were evaluated for both their individual predictive effectiveness and, where possible, for their contribution to existing selection procedures. All three scales yielded significant and useful relationships with their respective criteria in cross-validation samples. The empirically-developed scales also provided significant and useful cross-validated increments beyond the levels of predictive accuracy attained with the present composite. (Author)